Saint Margaret of Scotland

St. Margaret was born in Hungary, the eldest of three children. Her father, Edward the Exile, was a son of King Edmund Ironside of England and had grown up in Hungary. In 1054 AD two English churchmen set out to bring the family home.

The family came to England in 1057 AD, when St. Margaret was about twelve. Her father died soon after landing, before he could meet his uncle, St. Edward the Confessor. At the English court she learned Latin and read the Scriptures, and she and her sister, Christina, lived under strict rules kept by the woman in charge of the young ladies there.

In 1066 AD William of Normandy killed King Harold at Hastings, and St. Margaret's family lost any hope of the English crown. Her mother, Agatha, decided to take the children back to the Continent, but a storm drove their ship into the Firth of Forth. King Malcolm III of Scots, a widower of about forty, took them in and wanted to marry St. Margaret.

St. Margaret held back, because she wanted to enter religious life. Her confessor, Turgot, who later wrote her life, says she married to obey the wishes of her friends rather than her own. They married about 1070 AD at Dunfermline, and soon afterwards she built a church of the Holy Trinity where the wedding had been held.

King Malcolm could not read, but he handled the books St. Margaret used and kissed the ones she loved. He had her books bound in secret with gold and precious stones. Her favourite was a Gospel book painted with gilded pictures of the four Evangelists.

Crossing a ford, an attendant dropped it into the river without noticing. Days later it was found lying open on the riverbed, almost undamaged. The book survives in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

St. Margaret had the Scottish clergy meet in councils, and at the chief one she argued with them for three days. She did not speak Gaelic, so King Malcolm interpreted for both sides. Some Scots began Lent on a Monday and fasted only thirty-six days; after the council they kept all forty.

Many stayed away from Communion even at Easter, afraid to receive it as sinners. She answered that no one is free of sin, so by that rule no one could ever receive. From then on they received Communion at Easter.

Each morning nine destitute orphans were brought to St. Margaret, and she fed them with her own spoon. In Advent and Lent she and the king served three hundred poor people in the royal hall. She sometimes gave away things that belonged to the king, and he did not mind.

She sent agents secretly through Scotland to find English captives and paid their ransoms. For pilgrims bound for St Andrews she built hostels on both shores of the Forth. Her boats carried them across without charge, at the crossing still called Queensferry.

From the spring of 1093 AD St. Margaret could seldom rise from her bed. She said goodbye to Turgot and asked him to look after her children. King Malcolm invaded England against her urging and took two of their sons.

On November 13, 1093 AD, King Malcolm was killed by treachery near Alnwick, and their eldest son, Edward, was fatally wounded. That day at Edinburgh Castle, with no news yet, she warned those near her of a calamity for Scotland.

On November 16, 1093 AD, St. Margaret heard Mass in her oratory and received Viaticum. Back in bed, she held the Black Cross, a relic of the true Cross, to her eyes and face as she prayed. Her son Edgar came back from the army and told her his father and brother were well.

She told him she already knew, and charged him by the cross to tell her the truth. When he told her, she praised God for the sorrow and said she trusted the suffering would cleanse her of some of the stains of her sins. She died saying the prayer before Communion, as she asked Christ to deliver her.

After St. Margaret died, Malcolm's brother, Donald Bane, came for the throne and besieged Edinburgh Castle, where the king's heirs were. Those inside brought her body down by a small gate on the western side and took it to Dunfermline, as she had asked. According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, told by the chronicler Fordun, a great mist hid her family as they fled.

She was buried in her church of the Holy Trinity at Dunfermline, facing the altar. Three of her sons, Edgar, Alexander and David, later reigned in turn as kings of Scotland. Pope Innocent IV canonised her in 1250 AD, and her body was raised into a silver shrine.